"Mr. Broad has always believed in local ownership of the Times and would be interested in joining with others to buy the paper," Broad's spokesperson Karen Denne told Bond. Beutner's group would run the paper as a nonprofit, with Broad on its board and Beutner running the paper, Bond writes.

Local is everything to Beutner: local ownership, more local-news coverage. He says he would bulk up coverage of L.A. and Southern California but trim back some foreign and national political coverage in locales where a dozen or more news outlets often cover the same story.

If his group bought the Times, he'd consider using more stories from pool reporters and wire services. As an example, he cited a reporter stationed in Afghanistan for three years at great cost to the Times. "Afghanistan is not unimportant," he says. "But you can't do everything. You can't be everywhere in the first person."

Beutner, a former investment banker, dropped out of the L.A. mayor’s race last May “after months of fundraising struggles, churn among his campaign staff and a recent poll that showed him capturing a dismal 2% of the likely vote,” the Times reported at the time.

Broad told the Times last May he would be willing to "partner with others … maybe foundations or wealthy families" to buy the newspaper. "Sources" tell Bond that Broad and Beutner "would consider purchasing the block of Tribune Co. newspapers -- including the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, and the Hartford Courant -- and then sell off the excess titles."

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Andrew Beaujon reported on the media for Poynter from 2012 to 2015. He was previously arts editor at TBD.com and managing editor of Washington City Paper. He's the author of the 2006 book "Body Piercing Saved My Life," about Christian rock and evangelical Christian culture.